Superlight neutralino as a dark matter particle candidate

Abstract

We address the question of how light can be the lightest supersymmetric particle neutralino to be a reliable cold dark matter (CDM) particle candidate. To this end we have performed a combined analysis of the parameter space of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) taking into account cosmological and accelerator constraints including those from the radiative $b\to s{\hat{I}}^3$ decay. Appropriate grand unification (GUT) scenarios were considered. We have found that the relaxation of gaugino mass unification is sufficient to obtain a phenomenologically and cosmologically viable solution of the MSSM with the neutralino as light as 3~GeV. We have found good prospects for direct detection of these superlight CDM neutralinos via elastic scattering off various nuclei in the forthcoming experiments with low-threshold DM detectors. In a certain sense, these experiments can probe the gaugino mass unification giving constraints on the possible GUT scenarios within the MSSM.

20 pages, 5 Postscript figures